srunni

Yes, but it's produced by a different company. Red Hat is intended for the business market, whereas Ubuntu is intended for consumer usage.

ab2013

Would programs programmed for Linux that work on Red Hat also work on Ubuntu? What are the differences between the two? Would Red Hat be better for engineering studies or it doesn't matter?

I'm looking into Linux for my computer, and as you can see I'm linux-stupid.

Thanks!

Chipmoney

If you're Linux stupid I would choose Ubuntu.

It is much more friendly than most distributions of Linux.

starbright

another vote for Ubuntu. Free, easy to get, works as good. No wait, it works BETTER!

sarbaraj101

order one copy of ubuntu and one of kubuntu. try both and see which one works better for you

srunni

Yes. It used to be that Linux software was primarily tested on Red Hat, but these days, Ubuntu seems to be the first priority for almost all application vendors.

Out of the things that you would notice, nothing important. Just things like the default wallpaper and other theme details.

It doesn't matter. For the end-user, all distributions are basically the same.

Also, don't forget that you have various options for running Windows programs:
1. Dual booting. This means when you boot your computer, you can pick which operating system to use. To switch, you would have to restart, but you can install software on Windows & Linux to access each other's partitions. Ubuntu supports automatically setting up a dual boot configuration if you already have Windows installed when you install it.
2. Virtualization. This means you can run Windows inside Linux (or vice versa). File access between the guest and host (Windows and Linux, respectively, in this case) operating systems is also possible. VirtualBox would be the best software to use for this. I think this is the best option; the only thing it lacks is support for 3D gaming.
3. Wine, which lets you directly run Windows software in Linux, though support is far from perfect and many of the more complex applications crash when run in Wine. However, many popular older games are supported (such as World of Warcraft, StarCraft, WarCraft III, Counter-Strike, etc.) and it's getting better all the time.

ab2013

Thanks guys for all the info!

I've chosen to do virtual because I don't want to split my hard drive into multiple partitions. So far, I've downloaded Windows 7 Pro RTM from MSDNAA and installed it on Virtual PC 2007, and I'm trying to do the same for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (which I got from my dad, who's an engineer), but Virtual Machine keeps crashing when it tries to install Red Hat, so I've given up this weekend and I'll be waiting until next weekend, hopefully when I have more time. If not I'll just wait until Fall Break because this isn't as important as some other things.

I'm choosing Red Hat over Ubuntu because Red Hat is the Linux OS of choice here at Michigan. But since I have so much hard drive space (320GB total) I guess I can add on Ubuntu just to see how it's like, especially if it's free.

sarbaraj101

@srunni

I dun think saying "all the distributions are basically the same." would be a good idea. Ubuntu on one hand is really user-friendly whereas Slackware would scare the beginner away. Depends on what you want to do.

Besides, there are diff distros available for diff purposes. There must be some for engineering too.

Chipmoney

Ubuntu, like all Linux distros, is free.

Just download the iso from their website. You can also use the partitioning tool built into Ubuntu to create a new partition.

excelblue

As a Linux user of several years, I have a bit of advice: don't use RHEL.

The only reason to use RHEL is for the support and enterprise backend that's provided, but other than that, it's just a nightmare in terms of having the latest features, being up to date, customization, etc.

Your laptop is for your own use, and in your case, RHEL does not really provide anything that Ubuntu doesn't provide. Meanwhile, Ubuntu is easier to use, has a much nicer packaging system, is really fine-tuned, and updated. If you really want familiarity, I suggest you at least run Fedora, which is a more regular distro in which RHEL gets its components from. The problem is, stuff doesn't tend to get incorporated in RHEL until it's almost three years old!

As for Virtualization - Microsoft VirtualPC is awful at anything but Windows. I recommend you check out VMWare Server and/or Sun VirtualBox as alternatives. Both are free for personal use. Also, you since you have a host operating system, you really should be using one OS as the host and running the other in the VM. If you run both OSes in the VM, you're getting the worst of both worlds.

Since I'm comfortable with Linux, I run Arch Linux as my host OS and have Windows XP SP3 in a virtual machine. However, I also have Vista on dual boot just in case I feel like doing some gaming.

noimagination

Yes, although the actual software may be distributed in a different package format.
I'm probably going to make myself unpopular around here with this opinion, but personally recommend RHEL. I use Scientific Linux (a clone of RHEL) dual-booted with CRUX on my desktop, and it works wonderfully. You seem to assume that newer is better; in my experience, this is not the case. The overwhelming majority of new software adds little in terms of usability, and for the exceptions you can always grab a newer version from update repositories or compile it yourself. I never recommend any distribution based on Debian (such as Ubuntu) due to Debian's policy of patching packages downstream, which can (and does) lead to security compromises.

srunni

Use VirtualBox, it's a lot better than Virtual PC.

Yes, install both. I doubt the college tech support is going to be able to help you out with any Linux distro anyway.

I don't use Ubuntu myself for this reason (I run Gentoo), but security issues are rare and Ubuntu's ease of use makes it worth using for most end users.

Yeah, you're right. It doesn't apply to the more advanced distros. I don't think he'd be using one of those though

ab2013

I installed Ubuntu. At first it was painful, because I told it to partition 80GB out of my 320GB hard drive, but for some reason it only partitioned 2.5GB. It sucked 3 hours out of my Saturday night because they make it so painful for you to resize partitions. I eventually figured it out, though my partition is now 100GB (for whatever reason) ... I won't be changing it because it's not worth wasting more precious time (I have a lot of free space anyways).

Other than that, it is very user-friendly and it's SO much faster than Windows. They really should charge $19 or $29 for a CD for this. I'd pay for it, because it's that good. It boots up in like 20 seconds and shuts down in 7 seconds (I actually counted this). It makes my 3 year old laptop feel brand new again.

excelblue

Agreed with the first part. However, for the exceptions, which I find that I always tend to run into on a personal desktop, grabbing a new version from update repos or compiling it yourself is easier said than done. Most often, I find that the software just simply won't compile with the versions of dependencies on the existing system, and the same applies for a whole heirarchy of dependencies. Then, you find that you have to rebuild official packages too because a library verison got bumped.

What I'm saying is - it works very well when you have a stable configuration that you know isn't going to change, and the hardware's well-supported. However, if you're running it on a fairly new laptop (namely, hardware support) and have requirements that are constantly changing, then you're bound to run into issues.